Ignacio Kleiman

Ignacio J. Kleiman is the Managing Partner and founding member of Antarctica Advisors, a Miami-based investment-banking boutique he formed in 2013 with a team of bankers to provide strategic and financial advisory services to corporate clients in the food industry, with a particular emphasis on the seafood sector. Before founding the firm, he served as Chief Executive Officer of Glacier Securities, a New York-based advisory firm also focused on seafood.

Kleiman began his financial career at JP Morgan in 1991 in the Mergers & Acquisitions Group. Over roughly three-and-a-half decades in the industry (he is cited as having "over 32 years" and, more recently, "35 years" of experience), he spent more than a decade at Bankers Trust and Deutsche Bank in investment banking, served six years as a Managing Director in Rabobank International's M&A department, and in 2007 led the establishment of Glitnir Bank's New York office.

He was educated on full academic scholarship throughout: an International Baccalaureate with Honors from Pearson College (a United World College in Canada), a B.A. in Engineering Science and International Economics from Dartmouth College, and an M.B.A. in International Finance from Columbia University's Graduate School of Business. He is fluent in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, and holds Series 24, 79, and 63 securities licenses.

• Operates as a sell-side / buy-side M&A and capital-raising advisor to food and seafood companies, not as an angel writing personal seed checks — engagements typically involve company sales, majority-stake transactions, capital raises, and balance-sheet restructurings.
• Deep vertical specialization: Antarctica positions itself as one of the most prolific M&A advisory firms in the seafood industry, covering wild-catch, aquaculture, processing, and distribution.
• Cross-border orientation, leveraging Kleiman's multilingual background and international banking career to connect North American targets with strategic and financial (private-equity) buyers.
• Typical counterparties are private-equity firms and strategic acquirers (e.g., ACON Investments, SNH Capital Partners) rather than venture investors — signaling a focus on established, revenue-generating operating companies over startups.